Having reached the midway point in the first ever Kingfish Database Dive Write-Off, there appears no end to the wacky stuff the Database throws my way. Items ranging from the Weird to the silly to diamonds-in-the-rough encompass the shadowy corners where the wild things roam. Be they jewels or junk, there’s no denying the quantity and quality of their existence.

Today’s nefarious nugget plucked from the Eps nether-regions is entitled Crap Cars - and shows perhaps a bit of genius, at first glance. Through the years, whether car nut or not, we have all either owned, ridden-in or observed from afar the ugly, uninspired and unreliable examples of personal transportation foisted-upon we, the unsuspecting public by car companies the world over.

Style vs. Substance

Author Richard Porter uses the countdown format with a single-page profile of “fifty of the most craptastic cars ever to hit the American highway”. Each offender profile consists of a full-page black and white or color photograph with minimal descriptive text on the opposing page. A single-paragraph introduction uses humor to justify the book’s existence, and succeeds at neither. Throughout the book, Porter uses a mountain of metaphor and a know-it-all attitude to transmit his message. At best, some of the text is mildly amusing; though a minimum of useful information is revealed. At worst, Porter’s style reads like a reply to a Dear John letter - acidic in tone, as if to say “I never liked you, anyway”.

...And then there’s that &$?%# catch-phrase!

In what appears to be an admission that his lame descriptions need to be highlighted in their weakness, the author has chosen to include the potential for the worst catch-phrase since the 1970s American TV sit-com era. If This Car Was... appears a total of fifty times - pecking at your brain with a mind-numbing lack of imagination. Take for example number 17 in our car countdown - the Dodge Dakota Convertible, a one-year pickup-truck/rag-top that deserves Porter’s abuse - and then some. Its catch-phrase reads: “If this car was any dumber, It’d have full-time nursing supervision”. Huh? The venerable Volkswagen Beetle inexplicably makes the list at number 5 with the catch-phrase: “If this car was in your kitchen, you’d step on it”. Porter, who writes for the European car magazine Evo (a show of hands... anyone?) lists his website address as “sniffpetrol.com”. Need I say more?

♫ Mistakes, he’s made a few . . . ♫

The Beetle aside, there are a number of cars on this list that simply don’t belong, and others whose ranking is otherwise suspect. Porter gets it almost right with the indescribably crappy Yugo in the number 2 spot, but the early-eighties disaster known as the Chevy Citation places at the 16th position. This is a car whose disintegrating manual transmission and premature rear-wheel lock-up cost GM millions in legal settlements. The only fault of Porter’s number 1 choice of all time Crap Car - the Ford Mustang II - is its slow, ugly and embarrassing insult to the original Mustang legacy.

Yugo to the woodshed for such blasphemy!

Porter compounds his mistake by blurring the line between mechanically incompetent - the true definition of a crappy car - and the stylistically-challenged but otherwise dependable example. The Volvo 262C looks to be a 240 series Volvo with a different roofline; with its tried-and-true Volvo underpinnings, how does this qualify as a crap car? Just because the second-generation Chevy Camaro came with a V-6 engine in the Berlinetta configuration, Porter condemns it to misbegotten status.

Of course, Porter’s introduction disclaimer that not all will agree with his findings cannot save this book from the one-star rating it deserves. Number 26 on the list of Crap Cars is the ever-so-undeserving Renault Fuego - a car of which I was once a proud owner. Basically an 18-series coupe, mine had a leather interior, air conditioning, sunroof, 5-speed and, while not claiming to be a sports car per se, it was dependable and drove like a dream. I bought it used, and sold it for more than I paid within fifteen minutes of putting the “for sale” sign in the window.

Say it ain’t so . . . !

Number 15 on the list is the ever-popular whipping-boy, the AMC Gremlin. As a seventeen year-old with freshly-laminated license in hand, the Gremlin was an affordable and mechanically rock-solid car, unlike the Ford Pinto and Chevy Vega; both of which deservedly appear (numbers 11 and 6; respectively). It was used and the color was plum, but its 258 cubic inch displacement six-cylinder engine and manual transmission made this sub-compact a pocket-rocket. This engine is one of the best engineered powerplants ever built, and a modified (lighter) version still appears in the Jeep line-up of vehicles now sold by Chrysler. Another car I sold for more than I paid. I wish I still had it, in all its purple splendor...

Richard Porter’s Crap Cars - coming to a crappy bookstore near you. Just look for what could have been - toward the bottom of the bargain bin.

Crap Cars (2005)
Author: Richard Porter
Bloomsbury Publishing
175 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10010
ISBN: 1582346380
Cover Price: $14.95 (US)


Recommended: No